


Not feast on thee

by Betty



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-15
Updated: 2007-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:57:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Betty/pseuds/Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/thete1/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/thete1/"><b>thete1</b></a>: Someone -- touches nose -- needs to write the story where Dick's parents get smushed a few years earlier<br/><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/petronelle/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/petronelle/"><b>petronelle</b></a>: oh dear.<br/>Te: How would a young, befucked, YOUNG Bruce cope with that?<br/>Petra: Poorly.<br/>Te: "You lost your parents, too?"<br/>Te: "No, Bruce, no, you don't understand, we have to be there for each other! We don't have anyone else!"<br/>Petra: Suddenly the Golden Age makes a lot more sense. They're not sharing a bed for sex; they're sharing a bed because they can't sleep alone.<br/>Petra: I don't think I wanted that to make sense.<br/>Petra: It's not Dick's job to pet Bruce's hair and tell him it's just a dream.<br/>Te: AHAHAHAA<br/>Petra: *and yet.*<br/>Betty: You make me want to write the SCARILY GEN version of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not feast on thee

**Author's Note:**

> More or less an experiment in seeing if I could make myself believe it. Helpfully betad by [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/jamjar/profile)[**jamjar**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/jamjar/), after no harassment at all!

When he was still in school he used to torment himself by imagining, for a few moments after he woke up, that his parents were alive back in Gotham and he'd see them on his next summer break. He's had to give up that masochistic habit since he dedicated himself to the mission; there's no room for it.

Now he wakes up to another pretence: there's someone in his bed. It's repellent to have to pretend that they're welcome here, in his family's home. Some girl, barely a woman, who thinks she knows what he feels, who thinks her flesh gives some kind of comfort to an orphan, and he has to pretend there's comfort to be had. He pastes on a leer and makes his body relax. Then he realizes he's wrong, still unused to this new... arrangement sounds too settled.

Last night wasn't one of Bruce Wayne's nights. Instead, there's a boy tucked in next to him. Richard-- Dick, is still too new to his life for Bruce to expect him, but there he is. Suddenly, relaxing is easy. Dick's curled up, face squashed against the sheets and looks just like any other boy, but Bruce knows his secret. Dick's just like him.

He settles in to the comfort of Dick's sour breath on his arm. Dick's eyelids flutter with dreams for a moment, and Bruce watches carefully for distress in the corner of his mouth. Dick's mouth moves, an incomprehensible mishmash of sounds, but he seems to be dreaming something harmless, so Bruce doesn't wake him.

Bruce had been alone with his nightmares. Alfred would never have dreamt of tucking his deceased employers' child in next to him at night, and so Bruce had woken alone in the dark, hoping each time that the gunshots would turn out to be part of that nightmare. He remembers his horror of getting out of bed to discover the truth.

Dick won't have that, of course. His bed here won't permit him the confusion.

Dick makes a sound, half rolls, and Bruce holds his breath for a moment, superstitiously afraid of waking him, but Dick settles again, still sleeping. Bruce lets out his breath.

It's disingenuous to pretend that it's about Dick's bed in the manor, since Dick hasn't slept there by choice more than a handful of times since he came to stay with him, two months ago. Live with him, Bruce can say, in the privacy of his mind where he's not still trying to convince himself it's a temporary arrangement. Dick crawls into Bruce's bed now without invitation or the excuse of a nightmare, and Bruce, if he is being ruthless with himself, can admit it's a relief.

When he wakes up, now, he's with someone who knows why the good dreams are the ones that make him cry and that there's no help for the bad ones. He's never before been so known.


End file.
